Future of transportation is cleaner and more efficient

I was reading the recent article about folks who live without a motor vehicle ("For some, life can be sweeter with no car," July 27) and I was impressed with Hampden resident Kathy Harget's choice to live without a car. Of course, many of us need to have a car in order to travel back and forth to places like work, to pick up kids from day-care, or for business travel.

People who need cars, however, have reason to be excited about reducing oil and gas consumption in the near future as well. It was exciting to hear that President Barack Obama recently announce a new fuel mileage standard of 54.5 mpg by 2025.

Hopefully, this new standard will come into law without any loopholes, and will enable us to all have an opportunity to reduce our individual pollution levels while also saving money at the gas pump in the future. The standards would cut annual emissions of global warming pollution by as much as 280 million metric tons and save Americans over $80 billion at the gas pump annually.

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Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took the first step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions from airplanes. The rule-making process will take months if not years, but the lingering question is, how will the proposed regulations fit with what other countries are doing about...